


Warmer Climate

by literaryvengeance (evocativecomma)



Category: Doctor Who (2005), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Roski, Whovengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 17:56:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/726167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evocativecomma/pseuds/literaryvengeance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was going to leave him, but he was determined to leave her first.</p>
<p>But Rose Tyler cried in her sleep, and that night, Loki stayed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warmer Climate

Rose Tyler was asleep.

She’d been vibrant tonight, charming everyone at Pete’s latest party. Loki knew that humans, Midgardians, they didn’t create light. True, they played with their electricity and managed at times to almost turn night into day. But they were not luminescent. Intellectually, he knew that.

But when he looked at Rose, he felt he couldn’t be sure. She glowed, and it had nothing to do with fire or electricity or reflection of her bright surroundings. He tried to tell himself that it was simply remnants of the Time Vortex, that a creature so weak could never shake off an encounter like that and it would linger with her forever. The explanation comforted him greatly, until such a time as she smiled at him again.

Rose whimpered a little, shifting anxiously; he rested a gentle hand on her shoulder and she stilled, breathing evenly once again. She’d fallen asleep sprawled across the couch, head in his lap, having at least changed out of the ridiculous dress she’d been wearing. It was easier to see her as the funny pink and yellow girl who’d brought him here than it was to see her in such a fitting, flattering, revealing dress—not to mention that the black brought him back to the problem of her skin and its strange luminescence.

She fascinated him. As much as he tried to explain it away as a careful study of his captors, or of lower life-forms much the way these humans studied apes, there was a gnawing feeling in Loki’s chest that told him he should not be fascinated by her soft, mascaraed eyelashes, the way her tongue stuck out when she smiled. He should not know her footsteps better than anyone else’s. His happiness should not be magnified by her own—he should not go out of his way to make her happy.

But he was, and he did. Oh, he did.

In a way, Rose Tyler absolutely disgusted him. The way she held him captive under the guise of freedom, all as some misguided attempt to make up for whatever hurt she felt she’d caused the world. The way her emotion and sentiment infected him, festered in his chest until he felt shame at thinking of her with such reproach—that shame, it burned under his skin like static electricity, constant and frustrating in a way he could never get rid of. She had ruined him.

He felt disgusted that he could be disgusted by her, this horrific contradiction fed by that shame, the anger and frustration and fear.

_He was afraid to lose Rose Tyler._

Somehow, where that thought should have bred more disgust and unrest within him, it simply settled into a hollow space in his chest, a space created by exhaustion. There were too many things to fight. What was he supposed to do? He had lost everything: his home, his family, even the basic truths of who he was.

Now, Rose Tyler was the only constant he had.

The swell and battle of rage and fear and shame and confusion, they all settled when she smiled at him, when she lifted her hand to smooth out the crease between his brows, when she told him to let go and just do what felt right because he’d spent too much time calculating and sometimes you just had to live.

Rose Tyler was his constant.

Loki had gotten used to the sounds of her morning routine, the way she sang in the shower, the way she sometimes stole food from his plate when she thought he wasn’t looking. She was always in the way, but he’d ceased to mind. She was always dragging him to those awful parties Pete Tyler threw, and it was getting harder for him to not steal her away to some dark corner and claim her light for himself—and only himself. He couldn’t pinpoint the draw of her mouth, but it was growing and he didn’t know how much longer he could ignore it.

Surely, for this moment, he could analyze it, figure it out.

Softly, gently, for some reason so averse to the idea of disturbing her sleep peaceful for once, he shifted slightly and brushed his lips against hers.

And in that moment, as he sat up, Loki knew he had made a terrible mistake. Because he’d just cemented the strange, magnetic pull she had to him. He was going to kiss her, again and again, and he was going to push aside the disgust at the sentiment and relish it. In that moment, the flickering thought was that he wanted Rose Tyler to be his constant.

But Rose Tyler was going to leave him.

She was going to throw herself against the walls of the universe until she found her precious Doctor. The storm of emotions began to swell in his chest again, shifting around the space she’d carved out and filled against his will.

She was going to leave him, but he was determined to leave her first.

But Rose Tyler cried in her sleep, and that night, Loki stayed.


End file.
